ARTICLE BY EMILY MORRISON
When teaching my students the difference between passive and active voice, I often put the same sentence on the board every year. It’s one that I, as a mom, and they, as 17-year-old kids, can easily relate to, I suppose.
“The laundry was done by my mother.”
They look at it for a moment or two and then, usually, I pick some bright, young know-it-all to come up and circle the subject.
Nine times out of 10 they circle the laundry, and my little English teacher’s heart rejoices. It’s such a beautiful thing to wield the power of knowledge and the dry-erase marker over them.
“Whaddaya know, you’ve circled the object!” I chortle.
“The what?”
“The laundry didn’t do itself, did it?”
“No, the mother did. Ohhhhh,” and the lesson is complete.
For the sentence to be active, they need to put that mom in charge. They need to show who’s doing the work.
When I ask another volunteer to rewrite the sentence 10 times out of 10 they get it right. “My mother did the laundry.”
See how fun English class can be?
Yeah, I know. It’s still pretty lame-ville, but this lesson pops into my head all the time, and not because I love grammar (though I do love me some grammar).
On the wall at my gym there’s another whiteboard. (It used to be an elementary school, but now it’s a community center.) While I’m pedaling on the stationary bike, scrutinizing my sweaty appearance in the mirror, I tear my eyes away to read the following mantra:
“The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.”
My oldest daughter, Addie, walks in to see me searching for said magic and commiserates while asking for a swig of my water. I hand it to her and point to the whiteboard.
“Some days I wish the work would just do itself, Ma,” she laughs.
“Ah, if only,” I say.
God, wouldn’t that be great? If your body went on autopilot while you exercised? If your work day, whatever it is, was as easy as clocking in and out, and everything that happened in between required no effort on your part?
Just think of it. That chore you hate doing at the end of the day. The Herculean task of cleaning your home. The daily laundry, dishes, and food run. Walking the dogs. Taking out the trash. Washing the kids. Feeding the kids. Mowing the lawn. Showing up for your people at various events.
What if all the things that make your life challenging were done for you?
Yeah, you guessed it. You’d be as passive as that ol’ passive sentence. Who’s in charge here, anyway? Your life or you?
You. Ten out of 10, it’s always you.
“The work doesn’t do itself, Addie. YOU DO THE WORK!” I cheer her on.
She rolls her eyes and steals my water bottle, and I keep pedaling while wondering how many more days we’ll have like this, how many more times she’ll be in the same place as me and want to grab a quick workout with her mom before she runs off to her summer job.
Probably not many. And that’s OK.
It’s OK that she’ll be jetting off to do big things and her dad and I will still be teaching kids and walking dogs and doing laundry. It’s OK that Meg and Jack (my other two urchins) will be grinding through high school and college, and I’ll be their crisis control center either on the phone or in person.
It’s OK that my parents are getting older, and they’ll need me to hop in the car and come visit them more than they can hop in the car and come visit me.
It’s life, and life doesn’t do itself. We live. And I like living. I really do. I like doing all these things for myself and my people.
Some days, though, I’d really, really, really like an electric bike. Now that would be magical.